


Dead And Gone

by risibleWorld



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Character Bashing, Character Death, Civil War Team Iron Man, Frostbite, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, More tags to be added, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Suicide, This Is The End Of The World As They Know It, but kinda not permanently, crippled
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 03:42:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13872390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/risibleWorld/pseuds/risibleWorld
Summary: Actions have consequences. And even the oh-so-mighty Captain Righteous can't escape them forever.





	Dead And Gone

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little side project I'm working on while mainly focusing on Can You Walk On Water.
> 
> Let's see where that little field trip takes us....
> 
> I got inspired by somebodies work here, but I don't remember either author nor title. This story is going to be very different anyway.  
> Enjoy!

 

 

#  **Dead And Gone**

###  **Prelude**

 

 

_Wakanda, three weeks after Siberia;_

In the middle of a lonely Wakandan night Steve sits down, a blank sheet of paper in front of him. The pen hovers in the air, full of uncertainty. The first words come slowly and hesitantly until he realizes how much he has been dying to say them to the addressee of the letter.

_Tony_

_I’m glad you’re back at the compound. I don’t like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself. We all need family. The Avengers are yours. Maybe more so than mine;_

It gets easier then, for some reason and Steve’s hand darts across the paper.

_I’ve been on my own since I was eighteen. I never really fit in anywhere, even in the Army. My faith’s in people, I guess. Individuals. And I’m happy to say that, for the most part, they haven’t let me down. Which is why I can’t let them down either. Locks can be replaced, but maybe they shouldn’t. I know I hurt you, Tony. I guess I thought by not telling you about your parents I was sparing you but I can see now that I was really sparing myself. And I’m sorry. Hopefully one day you can understand. I wish we agreed on the Accords. I really do. I know you’re doing what you believe in, and that’s all any of us can do. That’s all any of us should. So no matter what … I promise you if you need us … if you need me … I’ll be there._

Satisfied with his explanation, Steve puts down the pen before his attention shifts toward the map of the Raft spread across his table. And arrogantly he thinks all conflict resolved.

So when two days later no one shows up to stop him from breaking Sam, Clint, Wanda and Lang out of the Raft, he chalks it up to Tony finally seeing some reason.

* * *

 

 

_US, two month after Siberia_

Pepper takes a deep breath as she braces herself against whatever horror awaits her on the other side of the door. Then she pushes it open.

No amount of debriefing could have prepared her for the view.

There sits the man to whose handsome face she’d woken up many mornings, before she had left, because neither could give the other what they really needed. (It doesn’t make her love him any less…)

The man whose looks had once made women stand in line regardless of his reputation as playboy;

That man, together with his astonishing visuals, is gone, lost to the world forever. In his place sits a disfigured cripple. The nose is gone, just like both ears, as Pepper knows from the medical reports she has received, though outgrown unkempt hair blocks the view. Large parts of the lips are missing too, exposing straight white teeth instead.

He sits in a wheelchair, as he’s missing a foot from his ankle downwards. And all the fingers on both his hands are gone;

Pepper desperately wants to turn away and can’t stop staring at the same time. She doesn’t want to be rude and can’t help it anyway.

Hesitantly, she takes a step forward.

“Tony?” She asks into the deafening silence full of uncertainty.

Tony turns his head into her direction ever so slowly and it’s not for dramatic effects either, she knows, it’s just his body protesting the movement.

“Oh Tony…” Right there, against all her resolutions, Pepper breaks down. She falls to her knees in front of the man she loves, will always love, though now she has to ask herself if she could have saved him by holding on instead of letting go. (What if she hadn’t broken up with him, what if she had been more resolute in her demand for him to lock away his suits?—she will never know…)

Tears stream down her cheeks.

“What has he done to you?” She whispers as she encloses Tony in a tender hug and then she keeps asking, not to get an answer, but because it’s all that keeps her from losing her mind. “Oh my god, what have they done to you?”

She feels the movement against her cheek as his jaws work and his breath brushes her ear. Yet his words are strangely distorted, due to his missing lips.

“Pepper…”

Tony Stark, the man who has always used a shitload of words to put everything into a different perspective than your own, now has to put all the meaning into one word. And Pepper understands, hears his request and yet refuses to acknowledge it. His last bit of grace she denies him, though deep down she knows, there really is no other way anymore for things to go.

Tony Stark is beaten and there is nothing she can do to help him back into the ring.

“Pepper” He begs again and then adds “FRIDAY.”

And as if on cue, Pepper’s phone rings. She has to let go of Tony as she picks it up and she listens to the caller with more and more tears streaming down her cheeks.

“You can’t … expect me to do that” She finally chokes out, the phone still pressed against her ear, though she stares at Tony who looks back unblinkingly. And there it is in his eyes—or rather, there it isn’t in his eyes anymore, because Steve Rogers snuffed out the light in Tony and she gives up and in. She does so with a wail.

Tony closes his eyes and relishes it. It will set him free.

 

 

And so it happens that two months later the public learns of Tony Stark’s passing. And the world stands still for a breathless moment before it starts turning again with unsettling indifference.


End file.
